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Message: [QUOTE="JoePgh, post: 3708968, member: 1131"] There is a new article (as of 10/17) up on ESPN in which Sue Bird makes some choice comments about the question of why women's soccer has more mainstream acceptance among the general public than women's basketball. She was amplifying the comments of Megan Rapinoe, who opined a few weeks ago on this subject. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to grab a link for the new article, but you can easily find it on ESPN (either the web site or the app). Basically Sue and Megan are both saying that women's soccer players are [B][I]perceived [/I][/B](accurately or not) as "girls next store" -- normal-sized, cute, non-threatening, mostly straight white girls who could be your neighbor if you are a white suburbanite. Whereas women's basketball players are big, largely Black, largely gay, and are perceived that way, causing the mainstream audience to "other" WBB players but not women's soccer players. Sue said that the WNBA tried, a few years ago, to market itself as consisting of "girls next door", featuring Sue herself as Exhibit A. But she implied that she would take part in such an effort again, because she is not representative of the majority of the league in several demographic dimensions (being white and normal-sized), and she doesn't think that kind of marketing would allow WNBA players to be true to themselves. I understand this perspective and take it seriously, but still I question the empirical assumption behind it. The NFL and NBA have a large and enthusiastic white audience despite the fact that the demographics of their players (regarding both body size and race) are similar to those of the WNBA relative to the norm for their gender. And is the WNBA really less popular than equivalent women's pro soccer leagues? I don't closely follow the economics of women's soccer, but I know that the current league is the third attempt at a financially viable pro soccer league for women, the previous two attempts having failed. Of course the women's soccer team gets a big audience (in person and on TV) for the Olympics and the Women's World Cup, but so does the women's Olympic basketball team. Are the attendance and TV ratings for regular pro soccer really higher than for the WNBA? I would be surprised if that were the case. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

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